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SeekingBostonMarathon is an amateur's journey to race in the ultimate annual marathon--the Boston Athletic Association's Boston Marathon. This is not an olympic runner or professional runner's advice site, but an "average joe" who got hooked on running and finally reached hallowed ground in 2010 and is constantly seeking to get back to Boston.

Snow Day

@SeeksBoston26Mi: "Let me guess...you're not looking forward to kids spun up on Cocoa Puffs home all day?"

One of my more memorable runs in Roxborough Park

If you live in Colorado, or caught the national news this morning, Colorado is getting hit with a blizzard today. As a kid, these are the two words you love to hear, "Snow Day." Kids love it, parents "not so much." Runners are probably split on the topic.

As far as weather goes, wind is not a runner's friend. Light rain can be nice in the Spring. Heavy downpour during a race just plain sucks (see Portland Marathon write-up.) Just like rain, I've had great runs in the snow, and others (New Year's Eve last year in single digit weather in blowing snow) that tested my resolve. Having run Boston the last two years, there's no way to avoid running in the snow when you have a 16 week training program leading up to April.

With the Colorado Marathon planned for this May in Colorado, I have to be prepared and train in all weather conditions. That means, don't puss out if the white stuff flies and get your ass out there. Having said that, the forecast calls for over a foot of snow today (Friday.) My training plan calls for a 17 mile run Saturday morning. My running group, (Runners Edge of the Rockies) normally runs regardless of conditions for the reason I mentioned above, "you can't predict race day conditions."

Based on the amount of snow that's out there right now, I'm sticking with the plan to run and will have my YakTrax in the car as I'll likely need the extra traction. The good news is that the weather has been good leading up to the storm so there won't be ice underneath the snow--that's when someone gets hurt.

Current snowfall on my hot tub as of 8 AM Friday.

The question is, at what depth do I move the run to Sunday (it won't be any better,) or god forbid, indoors. Indoors leaves two options; dreadmill and indoor track. Just how dizzy do you think I'd be after 170 turns on a tiny indoor track and how sore will the legs be from all those turns? I'll take this one to a vote.

Comments

I vote for 1. That many turns on an indoor track just feels like it's begging for injury (though I know they run marathons on indoor tracks). I've run in some pretty heavy snow, and just considered it good strengthening for my stabilizers to get over the slow pace.

I have no idea what it would be like to run in such a heavy snow. But I guess my vote would be 1. With 3 as my second option maybe you can change the workout and do the long one later this weekend? I despise the dreadmill, so that one is out for me!! Good luck!

I live in Texas, so I'm not sure what that white stuff is. It doesn't look very nice to run in. #1 is the badass way to go, especially if you have company in your craziness, but honestly, I would go for #2.

Can't be any worse than when I was ramping up the bike indoors 2 years ago and had to watch 2+ hours of Teen Mom and Jersey shore on MTV because that's what was in front of the 4 stationary bikes. :P

I vote for option 2. That's what I did 2 weeks ago when New York got hit with some bad snow and Central Park wasn't shoveled or salted. From different runners on Daily Mile and Facebook, I read that I made the right choice because it was pretty bad out there.

Oh and try FX...they usually have better movies than TBS. I watched X Men Wolverine. =)

I was fortunate enough LAST year to have a metropark where they would plow a 5 mile segment of a 9.5 mile loop around a lake. It went between 2 of the larger parking lots that had facilities. Freaking awesome. You could run there tomorrow with that much snow. I have done it before. The bathrooms made for awesome pit stops to warm up and regroup when it just got miserable.

You should hire a truck or small ATV and plow 8.5 miles of your route so you can run on it. If I didn't have Kensington last year, I would have been begging our property manager to let me have the keys to the association's little atv w/plow to do more than just the 1 mile of our neighborhood.

I need to run 17 tomorrow too, and they are forecasting rain. It is not warm enough for it to be refreshing, just bone chilling. I actually would take some snow over rain anyday, being from MI. I can handle snow that doesn't soak through. Now that I am in KY, it has been much more mild, running in the rain gets older much faster than the snow.